The Air Force is beginning to plan the replacement for the B-2, called the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRSB). It will be an airplane built for conventional and nuclear missions. Which mission comes first?
The B-2 and the B-1both of those bombers were produced during the Cold War. So we were in the middle of this ideological conflict, and as they came off the production line they went off and did testing for nuclear weapons because that was the primary mission and role that we had for them. They slowly grew a conventional capability.
It was a very different world. Back then, nuclear deterrence pretty much was strategic deterrence; thats not the case [anymore]. Strategic deterrence is economic deterrence, its cyber deterrence, its space. And there is a much smaller piece of nuclear deterrence. So the most probable use of a bomber in the future is really gonna be to influence decision-maker behavior to try to keep a confrontation from becoming a conflict, mostly by positioning the bombers, by demonstrating force, those kind of things.
But nuclear deterrence remains a mission set. After the airplane comes off the line and we have it conventionally certified with those weapons, then well transition to the nuke certification. We have never certified an airplane and both weapon types at the same time because its very different testing and it would drive a whole lot of expense. Frankly, trying to do them simultaneously would slow those tests down. There is a lot of debate about, well, is it nuclear first or is it conventional first? Its going to be both. Its just, whats the priority?
How has the nuclear deterrence mission at the Air Force changed as more nations acquire nukes? And our number of nuclear weapons probably will continue to drop, right?
Whats interesting about the multipolar world is that there are more than two players in the game in any scenariothere may be three players or four players.
Lets look out 10 years, a lot of nations that may have 300 to 500 weapons as we continue to come down. As the number of weapons comes down, theres more countries that are closer to parity [with the United States]. And I dont think we really understand what that dynamic does. In the Cold War there were two actors, and deterrence [was] primarily nuclear, because we acknowledged the Soviet and the Warsaw Pact domination of the conventional battlefield in Europe. Thats why we ended up with tactical weapons in Europeto help deter that. That was the role of our strategic weaponsto provide that nuclear umbrella. When you read the mission statement of our command, it talks about nuclear deterrence, which is very different than strategic deterrence. Strategic deterrence includes economics, it includes conventional forces of which the U.S. and the West have fairly significant conventional capability.
[Economics] is a good example. There wasnt much interaction between these two actorsthe Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and the U.S. and NATOeconomically because that was the competition and the conflict. These were two different economic systems, and it was an ideological conflict that was carried forward. During the Cold War we couldnt use economics as a way to deter the Soviets because there was no leverage. Today, economics is part of the calculus. So when two nations are considering elevating something from a confrontation to a conflict, theres got to be an economic calculus in there.
How does making the B-2s replacement nuclear capable change its design?
There are specific nuclear-safety and nuclear-hardening requirements that are laid out by the Department of Defense. And then just as the Navy has to meet those surety requirements in a submarine, we have to meet those requirements with our ICBMs and our bombers. That reaches down into a whole number of things: into logistics and how you track parts into acquisition; whom you bought the parts from; whats your confidence level in those pieces, in those components; how rigorously are they tested. If some components are required to be electromagnetic-pulse-hardened, so they have to be hardened against electromagnetic pulsesso you have to make that part of the design, part of the requirements that you set out up front, and then you do test them.
We continue to do testing of our bombers and our ICBMs for electromagnetic pulses to make sure that you dont get errant voltage or something in there, and that the systemyou still have command and control of the system, and that you dont lose the system because youve had this pulse go through.
Global Strike Command also flies conventional missions. When and how does that occur?
We are the Air Force component to U.S. Strategic Command on what we call a unified command plan mission. This is a post-9/11 development when we realized we didnt have a construct to execute a global strike. We always did it through a regional combatant commander. But that becomes very time-consuming and tedious. What if we wanted to do something quickerwho would do that? So it tends to be U.S. Strategic Command executing this global strike mission, and were the Air Force component for that. Its sort of similar to what we did in Odyssey Dawn with the B-2 [bombers].
But Odyssey Dawn, the U.S. effort in Libya, didnt look much like much a traditional no-fly zone.
For Odyssey Dawn, the decision was made that we were going to do the no-fly zone a little differently than we did it for a dozen years in Iraqwe would actually blow up their airplanes on the ground and then they wouldnt fly. Its sort of an effects-based targeting. What effect do you want? Well, we dont want them to fly. Okay, well heres one way to do it. So we executed through U.S. Strategic Command . . . They planned and executed the B-2 missions. As the B-2s were executed under U.S. Strategic Command, they were then handed off for the operational control and tactical control to U.S. Africom, so Africom would actually execute and conduct a strike. But they never landed. They would then leave the Africom airspace and transition back to U.S. Strategic Command.
We struck 45 of the 48 planned targets with precision munitions. And the targets were all hardened aircraft shelters. Thats where Gaddafi found out that his shelters were not hardenedand they werent really shelters.
How is GSC playing a role in the AirSea Battle plan, the Pentagons solution to get into areas that are protected by missiles, radar, and antiaircraft weapons?
When you look at AirSea Battle, everybody focuses on China. But it really is about the capabilities of these newer systems that are coming out and are being proliferated by both China and Russia . . . They have greater precision over the horizon, as theyre able to push forces, the traditional forces that we use, further from the fight. Well, as you get further from the fight, you now have a time/distance problem, which is: Ive gotta cover this distance, and if I can only cover it at this speed, then youre expanding my decision cycle, and that creates vulnerabilities.
So if I have a target X and I have the intelligence to know what target X is doing, but the defenses for target X are mobile, and I know I have to plan the ingress route for the weapon (not the airplane) over the period of a 4- or 5- or 6-hour flight.
PM's Joe Pappalardo and Lt. Gen. Kowalski take in the view from the PopMech office.
So you need to reconfigure the flight path of the weapon, not the airplane that launches it, so it can evade missile defense systems?
You know, theyve demonstrated the ability to move these defenses within 20 minutes. They can pop em up, fire, bring em down, and move within 20 minutes. As we get in there, we should be watching and say, okay, there needs to be a validity check as we get close to the launch point. So if these guys [mobile enemy air defenses] move, now weve got to change the flight path. We may not change a target, [though] we could. But its as much about changing the flight path to ensure the success of the weapons.
What do you think about the possibility of large cuts coming in the budget?
My sense, having been doing this for 30-some years, is that when we have had large drawdownsWorld War II, Korea, Vietnam, and then what I lived through, the dissolution of the Soviet Unionin every one of those cases missions went away. And so when you saw the budget decline, the [number and type of] mission was going away. And what were seeing now; the expectation is that as the current operations go away, the operational money goes away, but at the same time the baseline defense budget is going to shrink. So this will really be the first time that weve had a large decline in the baseline defense budget, I think, yet the mission areas are growing. So it becomes a real problem of management.
The Minuteman III missile has been steadily upgraded, but it has to last longer than GSC expected. Has the Air Force started thinking about a replacement?
The Minute Man III right now is good to beyond 2020. We have a mandate from Congress to make it viable past 2030. What that really means for us is, okay, that means after 2030, we probably need to have a follow-on system in the works and prepared if were not able to achieve all the things that we would like to achieve nationally [and globally] with [reducing] nuclear weapons.
Which would be eliminating them completely?
Right. Were signatories to the non-proliferation treaty, which says that we seek a world with zero nuclear weapons. But as President Obama said in his speech, as long as they exist, we need to keep them safe, secure, and effective.
But at the same time we were just talking about the fact that more countries will become nuclear.
Right, but that doesnt mean that the arsenals have to get larger. These are weapons of statecraft. The decision on the right number of 2000-pound bombsthe Air Force can make that decision. But the decision on the right number of nuclear weapons is a decision made by the president, and usually in concert with Congress. So those are high-level decisions, and we do the organizing, training, and equipping, and we execute and are stewards of whatever that decision is.
So what is the status of Americas next nuclear-weapon delivery system?
Were doing the analysis of alternatives for the ground-based strategic deterrentthats what were calling the follow-on to the Minute Man III. That study starts early next year. I think it starts early in calendar year 2013, and then its about a year-long study.
Could this mean the end of silos conceivably?
It could be, because youre looking across a range of alternatives. Part of what they will consider is what do these things cost; how do you keep them, as the president said, safe, secure, and effective. Are there any other attributes in command and control, or survivability? Theres an entire range of attributes that theyre going to evaluate.
Joe Pappalardo is a contributing writer at Popular Mechanics and author of the new book, Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight.
